The Hanyou Project
by Jann
Summary: Kagome Higurashi, apprentice to her mother in a military-science project that could determine the fate of humanity, must use Kikyou Shimiko's research and the hanyou, half human, half Youkai alien to make perfect army commanders. ::Ch. 5 is up!::
1. ThirtyThree Years Gone

:Author's Note::  
  
Okies, I'm gonna go for a Sci-Fi fic now. I figured it was time. Shouldn't be *too* difficult to understand. ^_^;;  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "Inu-Yasha" or any of the related characters. They all belong to Rumiko Takahashi. I am not making a profit from this work other than my amusement and perhaps the amusement of others. Please don't sue me, I haven't boughted the third "Inu-Yasha" DVD yet.  
  
One last thing: the Code. It is imperative that you understand the Code, since I am writing this as a .txt file and it won't take italics or bold or underlines or anything cool and high-tech like that. So.  
  
*text* emphasis  
/text/ something in Japanese and should therefore being italicized in a perfect world  
\text\ flashback. Should be easy to distinguish from the backslash considering how the text won't be in Japanese. ^_^  
~text~ thought  
  
For all my fellow sci-fi fans out there, I'd like to let you know they have light-speed travel. How they do it is beyond me, I'm no phycist, but I decided it would be useful. One thing I can tell you is that it's nothing like "Event Horizon" faster-than-light travel. The detour through hell would be counter-productive to the story line . . .   
  
That's all for now. Hope you like this story!  
  
  
It's the year 2303 and the human population is in the trillions, scattered among any number of colony worlds. They are ruled by the supreme military power, the Union and held together only by the war. The war has been underway for more than one hundred and fifty years, since the human race first began to colonize other worlds and they met their first other sentient life form. The Youkai, however, are not friendly and they have been trying to destroy the human race since contact. Nyoko Higurashi and her apprentice and daughter, Kagome Higurashi, are the newest scientists to the military community on the military-run planet of Swenson. Their project? Continue the work of the late Kikyou /TEXT/; create a being capable of fighting the Youkai for the humans. But is half youkai too much? Or not enough?  
  
  
  
The Hanyou Project  
Phase One  
"Thirty-Three Years Gone"  
By Jann  
  
  
"This will be your lab."  
  
The old, heavyset colonel put his hand on the scanner to the left of the door frame. The device scritched and scratched a bit, a sign of aging technology, obviously, but it eventually registered the print as that of someone with the clearance to enter. A mild beep of acceptance sounded and the bar across the top of the scanner turned from red to green. The colonel turned the handle on the door and pushed it open.  
  
"After you," he said, allowing Nyoko Higurashi into the dark room before stepping in and closing the door. "Lights," he commanded sternly, indicating that he was speaking to the computer of the room.  
  
The harsh unnatural light flooded from the ceiling to fill the mostly bare room. The desk was void of nick-nacks or self-reminder-notes, the display platform above it, blank, the counters lacking glassware or chemicals and the open refrigerator was completely empty.  
  
And it smelt like dust.  
  
There were, however, different experiments cluttering the right wall, on and in front of the counter and almost blocking entry to the chamber where the animals for testing would be stored. Nyoko only glanced at them before the colonel began again, but they all looked dormant.  
  
"You will be programmed into the system by tomorrow. For today, though, you'll have to operate the room manually, through the desktop," he apologized, leading her to it. "Desktop."  
  
The display platform, Nyoko realized, was equipped with an opaque backing that slid up when the desktop was activated. She had never seen one before in her life, though a time or two in old movies led her to a direct conclusion of it's purpose.  
  
"This is a projection panel, isn't it!" she cried. "Quite an antique, I must say. Am I expected to work with something so old? I don't know if I can."  
  
"Dreadfully sorry about that too," the colonel admitted rather sheepishly. "It will be replaced within the hour. We weren't exactly given much notice of your coming, Dr. Higurashi. That's the military for you. Which, by the way, is very pleased for have you here."  
  
"I'm pleased to be here," Nyoko replied. "My apprentice?" She sat down at the desk and the almost overpowering smell of mothballs rose from the plush-covered chair. "She'll be entered in as well?" Nyoko touched the pad at the corner of the desk and dragged the desktop icon around and above the desk icon. Immediately, a rectangular portion of the desk sunk down. A sheet slightly smaller slid over it and the portion rose again. "Colonel!" Exactly who was the last person to have this lab?! I suppose I should have expected as much from a two-dimensional desktop. The keyboard isn't even a gel-pad!" She touched one of the buttons and looked up to the display. She pressed a bit harder and saw a Japanese character projected clearly onto the back of the display. There was one plus to the desktop; it wasn't so old that the projection didn't look solid.  
  
"Desktop; Language; Corp," the colonel ordered. "Your apprentice, yes, your daughter, of course. She's registered, isn't she?"  
  
"Of course," Nyoko said, watching as the Japanese character transformed to Corp, the universal language evolved from English, Russian and Military.  
  
"Yes, she'll be recorded into the system as well. As for the office, it doesn't really matter who had it last. The woman left fifty years ago, if you can tell from the technology, and she isn't coming back," the colonel said, obviously skirting the question.  
  
Nyoko sighed inwardly, not really expecting any more. That was military intelligence for you; even if it wasn't intelligent or military related, they tended to hoard. Still . . . there was something strange about the room.  
  
Her eyes drifted once again to the abandoned projects on the far wall. "What's all that?" she asked, pointing.  
  
The wave of nervousness passed over his face again. "Unfortunately, space is, well, short in this wing and this lab has been used as a sort of . . . storage area. It'll all be cleared out soon, you have my word."  
  
"Whose projects?" Nyoko asked, getting up from the desk, not bothering to turn the ancient desktop off. She wandered across the room to look over the inert works. There were boxes of file-disks, a few laptops, each as outdated as the desktop and lots of plugged test tubes and petri dishes.  
  
However, most eye-catching things by far were the freezing compartments. There were dozens of them, each giving off an eerie, soft white glow, the inhabitants hanging almost peacefully in their suspended animation. The most abundant were rats of course, each mutated in some grotesque way, but the further back Nyoko went, the more pronounced their features became and the bigger the animals got, the cycle starting all over again from distorted figures to smooth ones. The deformations seemed so . . . almost *alien* in nature that Nyoko couldn't quite place what the scientist was trying to prove.  
  
"Uh, I don't think you want to do that," the colonel began, but he didn't stop her as she unstacked the freezing stations until she finally came to a huge one, taller than she was, and she gasped when she saw it's occupant. "Dr. Higurashi, those experiments are not . . . Dr. Higurashi!"  
  
"What the hell did that woman create in here?" Nyoko murmured. "And what hell will be wrought from it?"  
  
"Dr. Higurashi, I don't know what project you've been assigned to, but --" the colonel sputtered.  
  
"I think I do, Colonel. The Hanyou Project -- this is it, isn't it? Who could have predicated such a series of experiments . . . It seems so unethical that I didn't even completely believe the abstract when I read it." Nyoko looked the colonel in the eye. "This was Kikyou's lab, Colonel. And this half-alien soldier was her flower of life."  
  
  
+++  
  
  
"Oh, come on, you know we're all dying to hear about it," Yuka said, zillions of miles away. "What was it like to be frozen? Duh, I guess you wouldn't remember. But waking up! I hear it's a real bitch to get back into gear. Jeez, thirty-three years is a *long* time, Kagome. How's the military station? Met any good-looking soldiers?!"  
  
"Tell me about it," Kagome replied ignoring the last two questions. "I thought Souta was grumpy in the *morning.*" She looked into the digitally sent violet eyes of Yuka Kanno and she thought she could vaguely see the same glint that had dragged her through schooling. Of all her friends on the Japanese world of Ko (named after it's founder, a woman named Ko Chie), Yuka had been the one that had kept her life . . . interesting. For example, she was the one that persuaded Kagome to doctor the picture of their school headmaster so she could send it out to every desktop and laptop in the school. It was Yuka that talked their way out of suspicion for the creation of the photo with Asai-san's head upon the body of a grease-model.  
  
But seeing her now, even though to Kagome, it hadn't been more than a night, a long night, perhaps, but a night all the same, since she had left her seventeen-year-old friend in the lobby of the shuttle clinic . . . she was different. Now Yuka was somewhere around fifty. She had married, had children, had grandchildren and through it all, she had gradually forgotten Kagome and the years they were supposed to live through together. Bachorlerette parties, weddings and baby showers . . . all had long past for Yuka. But Kagome understood that. She had understood that since the moment Yuka had picked up the phone. In those few seconds that it took for Yuka's brain to register who this seventeen-year-old was, her hopes had shattered. So it was hard to think of the aged, wrinkled face on the display platform as her best friend forever.  
  
"Do you miss Ko?" Yuka asked finally, brushing a strand of her hair, mostly blue-silver, behind an ear. "Do you miss everyone that was here in Maika when you left?"  
  
Kagome thought about it for a second. "I think I will. But remember, to me, this hasn't been anything more than a weekend away from home yet."  
  
"/Jii-san!/"  
  
"Yuka! Come here!'  
  
"Uh oh," Yuka chuckled. "It seems my grandchildren are here. I have to go, Kagome, but we'll talk soon, okay?"  
  
Kagome forced a smile that she hoped similar to the one she had been flashing all through school. "Sure. /Ja ne, Yuka./"  
  
"/Ja ne!/"  
  
"No, we won't talk again soon," Kagome murmured, shutting her laptop once she had disconnected from the net. "I don't think we'll ever talk again."  
  
She tossed the laptop off to the side and fell back into the unfamiliar bed. Swenson. Was is wrong to hate a place so much the second you hear the name? Kagome fidgeted a bit, remembering when her mom had broken the news.  
  
\"Guys!" Nyoko said brightly, walking into the office where Souta and Kagome were standing in front of the desktop. It very new. Nyoko bought it for them with some of the money that she had received when her father died. She had hoped it would help bring them out of the stupor they had fallen into when he had passed away. It had, a little, but not as much as she had hoped. They were using it to compile an album of all the vids they had of him.  
  
"Uh, yeah mom?" Souta said from Kagome's right. "No, don't put that one in that section. He liked the supernatural, but there's enough of *that* for a section in itself."  
  
"I guess you're right," Kagome murmured. She tapped a few keys on the desktop and the vid disappeared from the display platform to be replaced with another. Nyoko was quite amazed with the quality of the hologram. She had seen desktops with less pixels and worse colors.   
  
"What're you guys doing?" Nyoko asked, kneeling on the other side of Kagome.  
  
"Making a vid album of /Jii-san,/" Souta told her. "Wanna see?"  
  
"Maybe later," Nyoko said. "Now we have to turn the desktop off for a couple minutes," she said, reaching across Kagome, the keyboard and Souta to the corner of the desk. She played with the icons until the keyboard was back within the desk and turned off the display panel. "I have some very important news for you two."  
  
"Uh oh," was Souta's dark response.  
  
"What?" Nyoko asked.  
  
"You're going to tell us something we're not going to like," Souta replied.  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"He knows," Kagome assured her mother.  
  
Nyoko stood and went back to the other side of the desk to stand behind Souta. She tousled his hair. "Well, I don't know if you're going to like it or not. I got another job offer."  
  
"Oh."  
  
As Nyoko had anticipated, both their faces fell.  
  
"Do you have to take it?"  
  
"When do we have to leave?"  
  
"How far away is it?"  
  
"Can we come back to visit everyone here?"  
  
"How long do you have to decide?"  
  
"Mom, will I still be able to apprentice at the end of the year?"  
  
"Slow down," Nyoko chuckled. "No, Souta, I don't *have* to take it, but they're offering quite a bit of money and the cause makes leaving seem worth it. They need a military scientist to research ways to defeat the Youkai. I only got an abstract of my assignment, but it seems pretty strange and very difficult. Evidently they've been looking for the right researched for this for almost twenty years. We'd have to leave very soon and yes, Kagome, in fact, they insisted I have an apprentice. I have two days to think it over."  
  
"Killing youkai?! Cool!" Souta cried.  
  
Kagome wasn't so easily deceived though. She noticed the questions her mother had avoided. "Mom, where is it?" she asked right out.  
  
Nyoko's smile tightened. "It's on another world, Kagome."  
  
"So what's the problem?" she asked, perplexed. They'd traveled to other worlds plenty of times. In fact, with /Jii-san/, they'd --  
  
Nyoko interrupted her thoughts. "It's very very far away, Kagome. The journey will take thirty-three years. By the time we get there, everyone here will be very old and if we ever wanted to return, they would probably be dead."  
  
It took a moment for this information to process. "That's . . . a long time . . ." Kagome began.  
  
"Yes. I don't *have* to take the job. But they sounded as if they really need us, Kag."\  
  
Kagome sighed. Life had gone by in a blur after that. They had talked about it more and not just a little, but a *whole lot* more. It was almost constant for the two days until Nyoko had to call back the officials in Swenson. Nyoko had even kept them home from school for discussion. It seemed important to her.  
  
Besides, what had been left for them on Ko? Family? Not much. Friends? What were friends if the Youkai won and stomped through the universe, destroying every human-inhabited world they came upon? No, it was for the best, this move.  
  
Kagome rolled over onto her stomach and opened her laptop brought up the album that she and Souta had composed.  
  
~Are you proud of me, /Jii-san/?~ 


	2. Learning What One Can

::Author's Note::  
  
Okay, the most important thing, I suppose, is the disclaimer. I don't own "Inu-Yasha" or any of the related characters. I probably never will. It took awhile, but I have moved on.  
  
Now, the real thing I intended to be most important (then I thought of the disclaimer ^_^;;) is the changing of The Code. In the previous chapter,  
  
~text~  
  
meant thought. It has been modified. NOW,  
  
text  
  
stands for thought! Just thought y'all'd like to be let in on that little secret. The rest of The Code still stands.  
  
*text* emphasis  
/text/ something in Japanese and should therefore being italicized in a perfect world  
\text\ flashback. Should be easy to distinguish from the backslash considering how the text won't be in Japanese. ^_^  
  
On with it!  
  
It's the year 2303 and the human population is in the trillions, scattered among any number of colony worlds. They are ruled by the supreme military power, the Union and held together only by the war. The war has been underway for more than one hundred and fifty years, since the human race first began to colonize other worlds and they met their first other sentient life form. The Youkai, however, are not friendly and they have been trying to destroy the human race since contact. Nyoko Higurashi and her apprentice and daughter, Kagome Higurashi, are the newest scientists to the military community on the military-run planet of Swenson. Their project? Continue the work of the late Kikyou Shimiko; create a being capable of fighting the Youkai for the humans. But is half youkai too much? Or not enough?  
  
  
  
The Hanyou Project  
Phase Two  
"Learning What One Can"  
By Jann  
  
  
"You called?"  
  
Nyoko let her eyes drift from the new desktop to her daughter's glum face. They had replaced it within the hour as promised and the new one was a model slightly older than the one Nyoko had recently purchased for her children. The display platform was bigger, though, and it may have been used, but it was not abused and many of the pre-sets from it's former user were comforting.  
  
Kagome seemed unhappy, but Nyoko assumed that was to be expected. She had just been uprooted from her home of seventeen years and probably talked on the phone with Yuka preceding Nyoko's call to her laptop. It really wasn't fair of Nyoko to expect her daughter to jump right into her work like *she* had for so many years before she had met Kagome's father. Nyoko was older than she seemed, though she hadn't found any need to tell her children that yet. She had become a military scientist only a few years before the start of the war, 150 years before. Since then, she had traveled from planet to planet, working under different generals. Usually they were a bit closer to one another than Swenson and Ko, though.  
  
It was Kagome and Souta's father that had convinced her to stay on Ko, where she had grown up. After his death, it had been Kagome and Souta that kept her there. Then she had gotten the call. This project seemed so much more promising than any she had been offered before! Merely reading the seemingly impossible abstract had excited the scientist in her that she had been sure was dead. Now, with the full report before on the display platform, she couldn't help but want to share the research with her daughter, who had always expressed the same vigor Nyoko remembered in the years of her apprenticeship.  
  
This work will heal her, Nyoko insisted to herself, but she wasn't sure.  
  
"Yes!" Nyoko said, her eyes shining. "Kagome, come here and read this report!"  
  
Kagome nodded and began to amble across the room. But she stopped dead when she saw the experiments that littered the right wall, namely the large tank containing the humanoid form. Her course changed quickly and she forgot about her mother entirely. She glanced at the other animals, ranging from rats to primates, but her gaze immediately returned to the tank containing the man-like entity.  
  
"That's what this is about, Kagome, that . . ." Nyoko trailed off, unsure of what to call the test subject. She realized her apprentice wasn't listening anyway.  
  
The right to gape was entirely hers, anyway. The tall tank held something unheard of, even in the world of military science. How Kikyou Shimiko had gotten the clearance to perform such trials was beyond Nyoko and furthermore, why the project was handed to *Nyoko* was even more perplexing. Hadn't she remained dormant in the community of military science for almost twenty years? Why had they called on her, of all people?  
  
Because they were running out of time.  
  
It was a grasping answer, but it was the only one Nyoko could think of.  
  
"Mom . . ." Kagome murmured, obviously thinking something along the same lines as Nyoko about the ethics involved in the Hanyou Project.   
  
One thing is for certain, Nyoko thought dryly, we will definitely hear from the courts before this is all done, hand-me-down project or none.  
  
Kagome ran her hand, fingernails painted in a deep red-brown polish that was thirty-three years out of date, over the front of the tank. "Mom, what is he?"  
  
" 'It,' Kag," Nyoko corrected softly.  
  
Kagome flashed her mother an angry glance, but her eyes immediately returned to the tank. "He's not an 'it,' Mom, he's a 'he.' I don't care what the book says. I can't believe anyone ever got exoneration for this."  
  
So. Kagome *had* been thinking along the same lines. "/Gomen,/ Kag," Nyoko sighed, because she knew her daughter was right. The thing in the freezing cell *wasn't* an it, but a he. Because no matter what other sort of blood runs -- or rather, ran, considering the suspended animation -- through his veins, some of it is clearly human.  
  
"He's so beautiful," Kagome murmured, letting her hand come to a rest over his nose, the two of them separated only by the strong glass of the freezing compartment.  
  
She was right. He was beautiful. There was no other word for the . . . hanyou, was it? The term made sense, Nyoko knew, from the reports she had begun to read. Kikyou was Japanese, so it seemed fitting that she had would place him with the Japanese equivalent of whatever Corp title he was given. In all truth, the Youkai had been discovered by a Japanese colony and called they had deemed them: demons. Hanyou -- "half demon" -- made perfect sense.  
  
The hanyou, with the shape of a man, seemed almost peaceful within the tank. However, Nyoko had read that Kikyou had quickly learned that he had a temper and refused to be kept behind bars in the holding room. Evidently the doctor had practically lived in her lab anyway, so she had created a sort of shrine for him. Everything had been cleared away after she had died though and all of his possessions had been discarded. Nyoko had read hungrily about the hanyou for an hour before she thought to call her apprentice. He was stubborn and he was temperamental. He picked on the other scientists when they came to "observe" him and he was declared too irritable by many to be of any use in an army.  
  
Yet Kikyou kept him around, she kept studying him until the day whatever it was that caused her death came by, Nyoko reflected. She saw something in him. Or perhaps was it that . . . she was just lonely?  
  
Kagome didn't let her eyes leave the face of the hanyou. His hair was long and silver and topped with two ears that looked remarkably like those of a dog. Of course, Youkai had the forms of many animals a lot like the ones that had come from earth, hundreds of years before. It would make sense for pointed, silver ears to grace the head of a hanyou.  
  
Hanyou. Even in her mind, the word seemed odd and clumsy. Unreal. She continued with her observations. Kikyou had dressed him in a red kimono, but it was still obvious that he was quite fit. He has the body of a soldier, Kagome realized. Her gaze traveled down and she saw that his hands ended in pointed claws. Exactly how far did the Youkai-ness go, anyway? His body looked mostly human; how was his mind?  
  
"Let's open him," Kagome ventured suddenly, her eyes glinting dangerously, removing her fingertips and turning her gaze to her mother.  
  
Nyoko sighed. "Kag, we can't."  
  
"And why not? This is our project, isn't it?"  
  
"Of course we've been given the amnesty to do as we please, Kagome, but goes beyond that." Nyoko took her daughter's hand and led her away from the tanks. "Kikyou was the one to freeze him, *not* the military. They can't open him. Believe me, they've tried."  
  
Nyoko sat down in front of the desktop and Kagome leaned over at her right. Nyoko tapped a bit on the keyboard and brought up the final document on the disk the general had given her. She isolated a paragraph on the display platform and Kagome read it aloud over her mother's shoulder.  
  
" 'One week before she died on September 27, 2270, Dr. Kikyou Shimiko cut off access to her lab. When Admiral Smit looked into the matter after her demise, he found each subject intact in the holding room except one. The human hanyou had been frozen. After several unsuccessful attempts by the technicians to disable Shimiko's locks on the cell, her notes were searched. She made no mention of the freezing of her most important specimen. The rest of the subjects were put into a frozen sleep in wait of a new doctor.' Ai," Kagome finished, leaning back onto the balls of her feet. "I guess she didn't want anyone messing with her baby."  
  
Nyoko chuckled bitterly. "The funny thing is, she didn't erase any of her files or anything. She just froze him and locked him in such a way that no one could open him except her."  
  
"That's crazy," Kagome mused. "What are we supposed to do, make another?"  
  
Nyoko shook her head vigorously. "Evidently, Kikyou's approval for this project was judged before the medical community before she created this hanyou and she was only granted permission by a slim margin. There's no way we would get clearance to make another."  
  
"Then what's the point of the experiment, Mom?" Kagome asked, letting her eyes drift to the hanyou again. He looked so harmless in his sleep. "I thought the idea was to make beings that could defeat the Youkai in space battle and hand-to-hand combat on planet surfaces."  
  
Nyoko shook her head again. "Well, you're right on the first part, of course," she admitted. "But that about hand-to-hand, that's all propaganda. Even our little friend over there would have no chance against a real Youkai, or at least, not one with any real power. He is still half-human, after all."  
  
"So he's to be a military genius, a strategist, then?" Kagome asked.  
  
"The thing is, Kag, his purpose was never made entirely clear. This Kikyou must have been near insane to want to create him and her co-workers paralyzed with fear to allow her. Kikyou ended this project before you were born, during the --"  
  
"During the Stoic Invasion, I know. No one wanted to fight because the Youkai were just so damn *powerful,* but they all knew they needed to do *something.* This was one of the many stabs at a breakthrough, huh?" Kagome asked.  
  
"Yes. This is just the kind of thing that would have been accepted during the Stoic Invasion," Nyoko agreed.  
  
"You're wondering why they called you to it now," Kagome said.  
  
She had read her mother's thoughts.  
  
"Is urgency up again, Mom? Is there going to be another invasion?" Kagome asked tenetivly, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.  
  
"It's . . . it's difficult to speculate with the military, Kag. I really don't know. I would say it's an extreme possibility, though."  
  
"Gods help us." "Indeed."  
  
  
  
::Author's Note::  
  
Sorry, this 'un is short, isn't it ... ^^;; ... the next'll be longer. There wasn't really another point of view to take yet, though and I decided to save Inu-Yasha's opening for later. Help me out here! Review! *Please!* 


	3. The Past

:: Author's Note ::  
  
I don't happen to own "Inu-Yasha" or any of the related characters ... I am merely using them to create an odd rendition of Rumiko Takahashi's story line that doesn't make a lot of sense yet and may never ... it's okay though ...   
  
*Emphasis*  
/Japanese/  
\Flashback\  
Thought  
  
I just realized a mistake that I made in Chapter two. The computer that Nyoko is given couldn't have been one "slightly older than the one Nyoko had recently purchased for her children," because they just made a thirty-three year voyage and she bought the pc *BEFORE* they left . . . that idea is totally irrelevant and should be ignored. I'll fix that right away, though it won't make much difference to returning readers (assuming I have those ^^;;).  
The Hanyou Project  
Phase Three  
"The Past"  
By Jann  
Sota was wandering.  
  
He had always enjoyed wandering. He had worried his mother a time or two and when he had started middle school, he had skipped his first few classes to wander and landed himself with a week of detentions the first day. It hadn't bothered *him,* though. He had known the school better than anyone else in his grade and though it rarely proved useful, it was knowledge he had relished in possessing.  
  
"When you twist the words, it seems a little odd that I can still remember exactly where everything was," he murmured in thought. Thirty-three years was a long time and he didn't even feel a little jet-lagged.  
  
An orangeish blur shot past him and Sota stepped back against the wall, jolted and startled. The gravity on Swenson was very different from that on Ko and the form had racked Sota's balance.  
  
"Today you die! I don't care what the mother says, you're a menace!"  
  
Sota braced himself this time for another persona and sure enough, there was another shift around him and a form, this one much taller than the first, darted past him.  
  
"Don't hurt me! I'm just a little kid, come on, what'a you think you're doing, you sadist?!" the first figure squealed from ahead. He was a bit quicker than his pursuer, but it was obvious he was tiring and would be caught, sooner or later.  
  
Amused, Sota followed, first trotting, upping to jogging and finally sprinting after them. However swift the orange-blur was, Sota was easily faster than them both and caught up to the taller figure presently. "What're you doing?" he asked suddenly.  
  
The asked character, a young man who didn't look but a few years older than Sota's older sister, was obviously startled by the unexpected voice and he faltered, if only a little. "I'm chasing the runt," he growled, recovering aptly. "If you're smart, you'll stay out of my way."  
  
Sota looked him over. He was of average height, a bit gangly and as Japanese as any inhabitant of Ko. It was actually quite pleasant to see someone of similar descent inhabiting the military base. His black hair was thin and what little of it there was had been pulled into a small, low, ponytail. However, though he seemed irritated, Sota didn't think he was really angry and also didn't think he was as tough as he wanted to believe.  
  
"What did he do to piss you off?" Sota wondered.  
  
He reddened. "None of your business, ya pygmy."  
  
Sota raised an eyebrow, but didn't question him further.  
  
"Miro~oku~u!" the first voice whined as its owner slowed. "I swear, it was an accident, and I won't ever bother you ever *ever* again!"  
  
"That's cuz you won't *live* to *see* me again!" Miroku snarled, seeing his opening. Sota stayed at his side as they caught up with the pip-squeak, shorter than Sota himself, and less of a blur now. He had turned to back into a corner and now that he had stopped, Sota studied his face. He looked around his own age and sported a head of light auburn hair, tied back with a blue ribbon. His ears were pointed and his nose upturned. A extra appendage suddenly slid out from behind him and Sota's eyes widened. A tail?  
  
The kid was a Youkai.  
  
The young Youkai smirked at the look on Sota's face, but didn't back out of his corner. "You're new around here, aren't you?" he asked, keeping a weary eye on his opponent, who had also turned to face Sota. "You've never been to Swenson before, have you?"  
  
"Uh, no," Sota squeaked.  
  
Sensing a decrease in the impending danger, he stepped forward and to the right to avoid Miroku to hold out a small hand equipped with thin fingers that ended in little claws. "Where're you from, then?"  
  
"Ko," he replied, hesitantly holding out his own hand to shake with the alien.  
  
"Ko?" Miroku asked suddenly. "That's, like . . . at least twenty-five, thirty years away!"  
  
"Thirty-three," was Sota's cautious answer.  
  
The Youkai nodded. "It makes sense. You wouldn't know about the Alliance, then, would you."  
  
It was a rhetorical question, but Sota shook his head anyway as his new acquaintance continued.  
  
"There was a treaty, about twenty years ago," he recited. "The leaders of my clan agreed to cooperate with the human race to annihilate any clans offending the Treaty of the Alliance. For the past, oh, ten, fifteen years, the Akera clan, named so to suck up to the humans, obviously, has been allied with the human race."  
  
Sota nodded, forcing himself to be open-minded. After seeing the vid albums of the First Invasion and later the Imp and Stoic Invasions, it was hard to look at a Youkai, any Youkai and not see an enemy. "I've been sleeping for thirty years," he said unnecessarily.  
  
"Damn, you're older than me, kid," Miroku chuckled. "You're older than . . . my mom!"  
  
"The name's Shippo," the kid truced with a grin, offering friendship in his voice.  
  
"Sota."  
  
"How long are you gonna be on Swenson?" Shippo asked, taking another step or two away from Miroku.  
  
"Probably the rest of my life. My mom and older sister are working on some science project. I don't think I'll go back to Ko. Everyone'll either be old or dead," he pointed out.  
  
"Older sister?" Miroku asked, his face brightening.  
  
"Don't mind him," Shippo said with a roll of his eyes. "The guy's sort've a lech."  
  
Miroku's eyes narrowed. "Don't think I forgot. Kid, you're as dead as you were the second you opened that door!"  
  
"It was a clo~oset!" Shippo squealed, taking off again.  
  
Sota chuckled to himself and followed close behind.  
+++  
09 March 2168  
Universal News  
INVASION  
Military Officials finally reach Ueda to find that time has already run out  
Barnett  
  
(Comm. Akera, Ueda).  
  
"It was just . . . barren. Akera was gone," says Captain Levine of the military world of Precht.  
  
Levine's assessment of the situation is in no way mild. Ever since 02 April 2167, when the distress signals were first interpreted, military officials have been fending off attack from the "Youkai" as the people of Ueda have deemed them, a word meaning "demon" in the form of the Japanese language used hundreds of years ago. They are a brutal enemy with an insistence to destroy all human life, as translated from the few messages the Union Military has as of yet interpreted.  
  
"This is the last straw," threatens Private Tabar. "We've got to hit the [censored] and we've got to hit 'em hard and we've got to him 'em fast. This thing'll be over before these [censored] can blink twice. We're gonna be ready for 'em before the [censored] can attack again, [censored]!"  
"If only they could've done it," Kagome murmured. She knew without referring to later periodicals that Ueda was later devastated, just as the Youkai had promised it would be.  
  
"What're you doing, Kag? Don't you want to see these subjects? They're quite . . . intriguing," Nyoko called from the holding room. She had begun to carefully unfreeze the animals that the other scientists had plunged into suspended animation after Kikyou's death. She had decided that they would be vital for their research, though why continuation was commanded was becoming more and more difficult to understand. Why call a scientist over if the hanyou couldn't be removed from it's cell? Why drag a scientist from a planet thirty-three years away to look into empty work? There had to be a reason that Nyoko wasn't seeing.  
  
The idea of coming invasion waved over Nyoko's mind. Was there something the public wasn't being told?  
  
Nyoko let her gaze drift to a collection of rabbits, each tagged and dated. She would have to check their tags when everything was awakened to know the exact observations that had been made on each, but the particular batch Nyoko was eyeing was disformed in ways beyond comprehension. They were each caged separately, as it was obvious that some would probably attack the others and eat them. They looked like super-bunnies injected with steroids with tempers to match. Huge fangs littered some and enhanced ears and toes, others.  
  
She must have done a lot of studying, Nyoko thought as she picked up the next frozen cell. She traced the outline of the rabbit within with her forefinger. Its features were prominently rabbit, save the fangs that were open in what looked like an angry squeal, the claws that burdened his delicate feet and his deep, red eyes. If not for years of research, how could Kikyou have come up with something as flawless as the Inu-Yasha on the first try? Some of the rabbits were limping against extra appendages and others unable to move at all. She knew the one in her hand would be another vicious member of the growing club from the scarlet in its eyes. So far, from mice to rats to rabbits, that fact hadn't failed. She wondered vaguely what color Inu-Yasha's eyes were.  
  
"I'm just reading the periodicals on these disks," came Kagome's preoccupied reply to Nyoko's previous question. "The ones before and during the First Invasion."  
  
Nyoko remembered reading the same periodicals herself 150 years before, though to her it hadn't been more than twenty. Such is life, was her quaint reply within her mind. "If you want to read those later, I think you may be enlightened by these reawakening," Nyoko suggested, using her thumb-print to open the small freezing cell. It seemed the bigger the test animal got, the more clearance it required to open them, elevating to a whole hand on most primates.  
  
"Yeah, sure," Kagome murmured.  
  
Inside the cell, the rabbit blinked in the quickly draining fluid and it's jaw snapped shut. It let out a growl that Nyoko never would have guessed rabbits could make and she quickly released the dazed creature into a cage she had already readied for it. The last thing she needed was a bite from a half-Youkai, half-Earth-mammal monster. She hadn't read the reports on that section yet, but she didn't presume it would do good things to her insides.  
  
Within minutes Nyoko heard the scrape of the chair across the tiled floor that indicated Kagome was getting up to help her mother with the unfreezing. She picked up one of the last of the small rabbit cells. "Kagome, if you're coming in here anyway, will you please bring some of the drogts out?"  
  
Drogts were animals found on the planet of Lahti. Most of the animal life on foreign worlds was sparse and while a portion of it was odd and exotic, there were a lot that were similar to Earth animals, though there were never anywhere near as many species as Earth had spawned. Beyond that, almost all of them were in no way capable of achieving sentience for any number of years below millions and millions. Drogts resembled small monkeys with the intelligence of cockroaches. They made good testing animals because there was an abundance of them and their systems were so similar other humanoid species. After the controversies near 175 years before had died down, they became imperative in any modern lab.  
  
"Yeah, sure," Kagome repeated.  
  
Outside the holding room, Kagome stopped before the cell of the Inu-Yasha in her trek to retrieve the drogts for her mother. His passive face, containing such soft, anthropomorphic features, mesmerized her. She reached up and for the second time that day, touched the glass that hovered over above his perfect cheek. Was he really the spawn of a mere experiment? Could it be that this Inu-Yasha had been sired in a test tube with the same seed as the malformed drogts and chimpanzees?  
  
Kagome averted her eyes from the hanyou to inspect the control panel that lingered about a head below eye level. This cell was just as intricate as, perhaps more so than, the one she had made home in for thirty-three years. The technology that haunted it surpassed that of the chimps and rats by far. She reached over and wiped a line the width of her finger of dust from the palm panel. It came to life, expecting use.  
  
It'll never be used again though, Kagome mused. That Kikyou made sure of that. A stripe of red ran across the top of the pad and the lights beneath the setting-buttons came to life. With a snort and a smirk, Kagome looked self-consciously to the left and the right. She already felt stupid, but it wouldn't do for her mother to witness something so foolish as she was about to attempt. While it was perfectly fine to know her childish notions in the back of her mind, it would be quite another thing to make them public.  
  
When she was sure Nyoko hadn't left the holding room, Kagome swiped the rest of the dust from the gel-panel and pressed her hand firmly to it. She left it sit there for the few seconds she knew it would take, fifty-year-old technology as it was, and awaited the beeps of rejection. 


	4. Awakening

:: Author's Note ::  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own "Inu-Yasha" or any of the related characters, but if I did, they would be picketing Cartoon Network right now. I can't believe "Inu-Yasha" was *re~esta~arted.* To~  
  
My knowledge about military status is more or less non-existent; bear with me here. I have constructed a tower, to the best of my knowledge. It's going to have to do.  
  
Private Captain Colonel  
Leuitenent General  
Admiral  
  
Ya ya, and the Code. Imperative, I know.  
  
*Emphasis*  
/Japanese/  
\Flashback\  
Thought  
The Hanyou Project  
Phase Four  
"Awakening"  
By Jann  
"Colonel Sampson. Thank you for joining us," the general said as warmly as the militia-ego would allow. The colonel shifted in his shoes and wished to be just about any place other than the one he occupied that second.  
  
"Glad to be of any service, sir!" Sampson managed, jerking into a salute. He had just received his rank several weeks before. He had been looking forward to a few good years in it before he moved up. *Up,* he had expected. Not *stripped.* He wasn't sure which was more likely in the situation. In his late twenties, he was young to such eminence. He wasn't ready to be a hero and he was afraid he would be expected to take exactly that role.  
  
"At ease, Colonel," the general commanded. Sampson slid out of the salute before the general went on. "Please, Colonel Sampson, repeat to myself and the admiral what you told me over the phone earlier today."  
  
Sampson swallowed the lump in his throat. "We've been monitoring the activity of all the Youkai in the ranges of the Union Planets and it seems they're . . . preparing for attack."  
  
"What makes you think so?" the admiral demanded urgently, not waiting for the general to relay the question for him. The older man leaned onto the desk, planting his palms firmly in front of him in obvious distress.  
  
The general looked a bit flushed at the outburst, but he didn't say anything to his superior. Sampson swallowed violently again. "We have been recording massive amounts of . . . fuel is being burned on the stations. Lots of it. The buggers are getting ready to attack," he said softly, abandoning all protocol. "They did it before the First Invasion and they did it before the Imp Invasion and they did it before the Stoic Invasion and they're doing it again."  
  
The admiral sighed and removed his hands from the general's desk. He regained control of his emotions and stood again. "Keep tabs on this, Colonel Sampson. Keep tabs for the slightest hint of intent of violence towards any of the Union Planets. Tell me when I need to call the Alliance."  
  
Sampson slauted again, assuming, or rather *hoping*, he would be dismissed. "I will continue to monitor the situation personally, sir! They won't catch us off-guard this time."  
  
"General. See if you can't speed up work on the X-Projects. We may just need the exact insanity they hold in the coming months," the admiral said wearily.  
  
"Of course, sir!" the general said, standing to salute.  
  
"Sit down, general. Saluting to me really isn't gonna kill the damn Youkai any deader; get to work if you want to do anyone any good."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
+++  
The computer within the freezing cell whirred to life to process Kagome's hand-print. A shiver ran up her spine at the noise. It couldn't possibly take this long to process a print that would be rejected, could it? Computers must have been slower fifty years before than Kagome had thought. But she didn't remove her hand. She had put it there and there it would stay until the scan was complete. Finally, the computer registered Kagome's print and Kagome reclaimed the appendage.  
  
To her horror, the stripe across the top of the panel turned from red to green and the mechanism produced an under-heard chirp of recognition. "System: Online," the soft, motherly voice of technology informed Kagome. "System: Draining."  
  
"Oh, shit. *Shit!*" Kagome murmured. She had wanted to release the hanyou from his prison, but it wasn't supposed to happen like *this.* "Oshitoshitoshit!" she hissed, frantically ordering the computer to stop what it was doing.  
  
It didn't respond to her pokes and prods to the random buttons and the clear liquid in the cell began to slowly drain.  
  
"System," Kagome ordered. "System, retreat."  
  
"Cannot obey. Unlogged user," the computer explained unsympatheitcally.  
  
Of course. Neither of them had been logged into the room's computer. Of course the cell wouldn't listen to her. "Mo~om," Kagome whimpered, darting around the corner into the holding room where her mother was reviving the last of the rabbits. "*Mom*!"  
  
"Kagome, what is it?" Nyoko asked, perplexed by her daughter's tone. She carefully dumped the last rabbit into the cage and closed it quickly. She placed the empty cell on the stack with the others.  
  
"Mom, I think I, uh, what I mean to say is, uh," Kagome began. "I, er . . . I think the, uh, I think Inu-Yasha's waking up," she said, squeezing her eyes shut.  
  
Nyoko chuckled lightly. "What, did you put your hand on the scanner? They hum for a few minutes, Kag, it's an old computer. Don't worry about it, I tried it too," she added, a bit embarrassed. "It's harmless."  
  
"No, Mom," Kagome said firmly. "The system spoke. 'System: Online. System: Draining,' " she mocked. "It *is* draining. I can't stop it."  
  
The color emptied from Nyoko's cheeks as she darted past Kagome to the hanyou's cell. Kagome followed, nervously.  
  
"Drain at ninety percent," the female voice said happily. The tips of the hanyou's ears met the air being pumped into the cell from the lab.  
  
"Kagome!" Nyoko cried. "How did you get past the blocks? More over, why the *hell* did you initiate the draining sequence?!"  
  
"I didn't, Mom!" Kagome defended.  
  
"You had to Kag! Computers are *programmed* to do what they're *told.* They don't act on their own!" Nyoko insisted, pressing buttons frantically.  
  
"Drain at eighty percent."  
  
"Well who knows what kinds of preferences that Kikyou had on her system! She might have set it *up* to drain on log-in," Kagome explained.  
  
Nyoko's face lost all the color it had managed to regain.  
  
"We can't be in *trouble,* can we?" Kagome asked. "It's our project."  
  
"They assigned us with the assumption that we couldn't open the hanyou's cell," Nyoko pointed out, wringing her hands. Kagome had never seen her mother so nervous before in her life.  
  
"Drain at seventy percent."  
  
"Then they shouldn't have made assumptions," Kagome pouted.  
  
"It's the military, Kag. They can do whatever they want," Nyoko murmured, watching as the hanyou's neck cleared of the gel and glistened against the harsh lights of the lab.  
  
"Well get ready to play welcome wagon, Mom," Kagome said dryly.  
  
"I've got to call the general," Nyoko said suddenly. "We *have* to call the general."  
  
"Drain at sixty percent."  
  
"Well, wait!" Kagome cried. "Wouldn't they just send him off to some scientist to study him? Wouldn't they take him away? It's our project," Kagome added vehmnantly.  
  
"Honey," Nyoko said, bursting in laughter. "*We're* the people you're so afraid them sending the project to."  
  
"Drain at fifty percent."  
  
Inu-Yasha's upper chest was totally visible. It was actually somewhat amusing, what Kikyou had dressed him in, though why she had kept him clothed through the duration of the freezing was beyond Kagome. Even humans were asked to strip before they were put into a freezing cell. The more mass there was in the tank, the more energy it took and the numbers were amazing from ounce to ounce. The kimono looked just like the ones out of the history books from the Warring States era in Japan, on *Earth.* Bright and merciless red. Why hadn't Kikyou had him undress? Was it time? Had she run out of time?  
  
"What are they going to expect us to do?" Kagome asked, her fear subsiding. She approached the cell and fingered the latch just under the computer panel. "What are we supposed to *do* with him? For now, I mean. We can't very well put him into the holding area. He's sentient. The code is very clear, you know. Or the more recent version that I was reading up on. If you experiment on a sentient being, you have to treat him or her like a sentient being."  
  
"I haven't read the most recent version of the Code yet," Nyoko admitted softly. When she had traveled from planet to planet before, it had been a practice of hers to read it first thing. She had slid from protocol during the years of motherhood. The last she remembered, expirimenting on sentient creatures was outrageous. Just one more mystery as to how far technology and morals had evolved or fallen respectivley over the past thirty-three years. Or perhaps just how insane the medical community was when they gave Kikyou the go-ahead to perform such as expiriement.  
  
"Drain at forty percent." The hanyou would soon awaken. When his systems pulled back into awareness, his eyes would open and he would look around blearily as Kagome had. She stepped back unconsciously and regarded the latch on the door.  
  
"I'm calling General Daven," Nyoko informed her daughter and she stepped crossed the room to the desktop. She minimized the windows and windows of the reports that Kagome had been reading and opened another to call Daven's office.  
  
"Drain at thirty percent."  
  
By the time Kagome had pulled back into consciousness, all the gel had been long gone while Sota hadn't woken on his own at all, but had to be injected with something to reawaken his systems and remind them to complete reflexive actions like respiration and circulation. How long would it take the Youkai?   
She remembered Kikyou's reports. He was "easily angered" and "difficult to befriend," Shimiko had written. She took another small step away from the cell, clenched her hands into fists at her sides and waited.  
  
"Drain at twenty percent."  
  
The hanyou's eyes snapped open and his head jerked up.  
  
"Kikyou," was the soft and vengeful whisper over the speakers. Kagome read his lips as he spoke his next sentence, no louder than the first, looking straight into her eyes. "Bitch," he sneered at her, those amber eyes never faltering from hers. "How dare you?" 


	5. Meetings, Mistakes and Hoping For Miracl...

::Author's Note::  
  
If there's any readers still out there, please don't smoosh me.  
  
Sorry, I've been having a bad bout of writer's block with this particular story. My sci-fi drive has, like, been paralyzed or someat. But I'm here now; so don't stone me. ^^;;  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Inu-Yasha or any of the related characters.  
  
I think their may be some technology issues in the past chapters. I have a cheeky little problem of forgetting that *they're* working 300 years ahead of *me* and that they're *used* to being thirty-three years behind the technology they're *working* with. Sorry -- I'm confusing myself. Just a warning. ^^  
  
Lately, ff.net has been doing someat screwy with my spacing. Hopefully it's not a problem for this chapter, but if it is, well, bear with me here -- hang on. I *think* I defeated that -- we'll know upon upload. But now there's annoying little asteriks . . . well . . . less annoying than the loss of my spaces.  
*  
*  
*  
The Hanyou Project  
Phase Five  
"Meetings, Mistakes and Hoping for Miracles"  
By Jann  
*  
*  
Sota rounded a corner, just behind Shippo and Miroku and stopped in the hall where they had. He put his hands on his knees and after a few seconds of staring at the floor and regaining control of his convulsing lungs, he looked up again. They had dashed through the cafeteria, a basketball game and by far the most irate group of adults Sota had ever come across. In fact, it had become less of a "chase," persay and more of a "terrified run by allies."  
  
Sota was a sprinter, not a distance runner.  
  
"Jeez, are all the doctors here that petulant?" Sota asked as he recovered, falling against the wall next to Miroku, who didn't seem to be any better with long bouts of running than he was. He rubbed his forehead fleetingly with the back of his hand.  
  
Shippo, however, was skipping around like mad, as if he had just gotten up from having ice cream for breakfast. " 'Round here they are," was Shippo's casual answer. "Haven't you ever lived on a military base before? Isn't your *mom* a military doctor?"  
  
"Well sure," Sota replied. "But I don't figure anyone's run away from her before."  
  
"I suppose it doesn't help that we aren't even supposed to be in this wing," Miroku added thoughtfully from Sota's left.  
  
"Where are we, anyway?" Sota asked blankly.  
  
"In the research wing," Shippo riposted, still bouncing off the walls. "He's right, sure. We aren't s'posed to mess around in the research wing, but no one really cares if you stay out've their way. They're all to involved in whatever they're working on to notice kids in their wing."  
  
~If anything, that run gave the damned thing more energy,~ Sota thought to himself. "I wonder where my mom and sister's lab is," he said aloud. It didn't really matter, but it would be nice to know. Sota liked to know.  
  
"That's a great idea, booger," Miroku said, brightening up considerably. "Oh come off it. I won't hurt anyone," he added with a roll of his eyes at Sota's weary expression. "Why, Miss Sango and I . . . well, perhaps the two of you are a bit young for any de --"  
  
"I don't think you should bring up --" Shippo began.  
  
"Details about *what*, exactly?" demanded a voice behind them, cutting off Shippo as surely as he had cut off Miroku. "If I'm right, *Mister* Miroku, there is exactly nothing to tell."  
  
Sota didn't have to turn. He knew from Miroku's deepening blush that he had exaggerated a bit more than he should have. Sota chuckled inwardly.  
  
"That's Sango," Shippo said dismissivly as Sango made her way around Miroku, eyeing him carefully. "She works back here as an apprentice too. Isn't that what you said your sister does? She works for some old lady down a couple labs."  
  
"You're cute," Sango said, her tone sounding more like it was carrying a threat than a compliment. She tousled Shippo's hair. "Real cute. Don't talk about my Journeyman like that."  
  
The top of Sango's head just leveled with the top of Miroku's and her hair, a deep ebony, fell elegantly past her waist. She was evidently just as Japanese as Miroku and therefore undeservingly, as she was yet to do something admirable, had Sota's instant trust.  
  
"Sure, okay," Shippo grumbled, squirming out from under Sango's hand.  
  
"Hey, you," Sango said suddenly. "Name."  
  
Sota knew better than to raise an eyebrow, even at her directness. "Higurashi Sota."  
  
"Higurashi?" Sango asked, her eyes widening. "Then you must be related to the Higurashis in Kikyou's old lab. You have to be," she added. "Their lab is next to my Journeyman's and mine. They've got the . . . well, you wouldn't understand, but it's important. Important project. May make or break the human race, if . . ."  
  
Sango looked embarrassed, as if she had said a lot more than she had meant to. Sota stored away her obvious fluster, not really knowing what it meant, but assuming it would be important later all the same. "Yeah," he finally said slowly. "My mom and sister just started here today. How would you know them already?"  
  
"I . . . don't *know* them . . . I know *of* them . . ."  
  
"Uh huh," Sota said. "Well I *know* them," he said unessicarily, searching Sango's face for any trace of jealously at that fact. Detecting just enough for merit, he added, "Why don't you eat with us tonight, you and your Journeyman? You could fill them in on . . . er . . . the base."  
  
Sango looked as though she was swallowing a boulder. "Sure."  
  
Sota nodded professionally.  
  
~Mom's gonna kill me.~  
*  
*  
+++  
*  
*  
"B-bitch?" Kagome demanded. " *Kikyou?* "  
  
Of course Kagome couldn't help it; she gaped. It was bad enough that he was calling her names, but the first and foremost problem was that he thought she was his former . . . friend . . . if there was any other way to put it.  
  
"No-no-no," Kagome began. "Not Kikyou. Kagome. *My* name is Kagome. Kikyou is . . . gone."  
  
"Loon," Inu-Yasha spat. "Of course you're Kikyou. Don't play games with me. I'm not really in the mood."  
  
"Drain at ten percent."  
  
~He *is* testy, isn't he?~ Kagome asked herself. On the other hand, she should have expected no less; Kikyou had disks and disks that all said the same thing: this one's a bit hot-tempered. "I'm not playing games with anyone," she replied.  
  
"So Kikyou," he said, completely disregarding what she had just said, "what was this for, huh?" he asked, leaning drunkenly palms first onto the glass and Kagome got a closer view of the claws that ended his fingers. His amber eyes held a deep-seeded hatred and he was no longer the pretty young man Kagome had noted when she had first entered the room. The serenity had left his face the moment he had awoken and it had been replaced with insatiable rage. He swayed a bit as he regained control of his systems.  
  
"Drain complete. Instigate rinse?"  
  
"Stand by for my command," she ordered the computer. "Standing by."  
  
~Of course,~ Kagome reflected bitterly as she watched the hanyou, ~the damn thing cooperates with me *now* ~  
  
Inu-Yasha's ears twitched a bit, his eyes narrowed and Kagome had to hold back a giggle, despite his obviously growing ire. "Rinse?" he demanded.  
  
"Duh," Kagome returned, a bit childishly. "Rinse. You're covered in gel. You know, what? Strip."  
  
" *What?!* "  
  
"Please remove your kimono," Kagome repeated, more dignified. "I'm not initiating rinse until you do and you're not getting out until you're rinsed, so get over it and take off your clothes. It'll only take a couple minutes. Most intelligent people don't wear clothes into that damned thing anyway," she added in a mutter.  
  
Inu-Yasha looked as though he wanted to kill her. "Most intelligent people don't throw people into -- Gods!" he ranted, cutting himself off. He stood a little straighter and pressed his palms more firmly against the glass. He looked as though he was sizing it up. From the look in his eyes, Kagome knew even without a muscle flinching that he knew he could bust through it and he may well had been right.  
  
Kagome deftly reached over the stasis tube and opened a small compartment just below the keypad, which was below the palm-scanner that had gotten Kagome into the mess in the first place. Inu-Yasha's eyes followed her fingers wearily as they hovered over the five hypodermic needles that made home in the niche.  
  
Each needle was labeled, in hand that Kagome presumed to be the late Kikyou Shimiko's, with unreal amounts of a drug that would etherize an elephant. Kagome snatched one and was ready to trust Skimiko's judgment that it wouldn't kill him though and held it in front of him.  
  
"This'll put you out for a day, Inu-Yasha," Kagome warned, nothing the flare in his eyes at her use of his name. "Just take off the damn kimono. I'll find some other clothes for you to wear until it's been cleaned."  
  
Inu-Yasha's need to destroy seemed to diminish to a mere hunger for requital at the sight of the needle and he fell away from the glass. He shot Kagome one last look before beginning to take off his clothing.  
*  
*  
+++  
*  
*  
"Get me an X-Project researcher on every line," demanded General Enders the second he reached his office. "Miss Schult, that means *now.* Dimiss all my calls and get to work!"  
  
"Excuse me, General, but if you'll have her, there's an X-Project researcher on line four already. She says it's important?" Miss Schult responded uncertainly. She wrung her left hand slightly and fumbled with her papers with the right. "It's Dr. Higurashi, she --"  
  
"Forget the details, get her on the phone in my office. *Now,* " he added for emphasis.  
  
Miss Schult wrung her left hand a bit more, typing a few keys with her right. "Line four," she said again.  
  
"Yes, yes," the general replied, waving her off as he entered his office, a connecting to his secretary's. He went immediately to his desk and palmed into his desktop. "Computer," he said sternly as the machine whirred to life. "Connect me to line four."  
  
General Enders had personally visited the most promising two of the six X-Projects as soon as the Admiral had left his office. The other four he planned to merely fill in over the phone. Enders personally thought all six were budget eaters, the one he was receiving the call about, the Hanyou Project, the most so for obvious reasons. They cost and cost and never profited. However, he was under the Admiral's orders and he would follow them into space without a suit.  
  
When it finally connected, General Enders didn't have a chance to ask Nyoko what she wanted before she blurted it out to him.  
  
"General, I think we may have overstepped protocol."  
  
Enders' eyes narrowed, but he was cut off yet again before he could speak.  
  
"It was an accident, General," Nyoko rambled. "Something odd is going odd is going on with the computer. Someone must have rewritten it's systems, because it just --"  
  
"Nonsense," Enders said, his sharp voice cutting off Nyoko for once. "Dr. Higurashi, we tried to overwrite those systems more times than I can count myself. Dr. Shimiko has a virus on them protecting them from anyone's interference."  
  
"Well, someone breached it."  
  
" *Impossible,* " Enders replied, his *patience* breaching.  
  
"The Inu-Yasha is awake."  
  
" *What?!* "  
  
That sent Enders straight out of his chair and then back down again. "You've got to be kidding me, Dr. Higurashi. There must be some kind of mistake."  
  
"You think so? Come down for yourself."  
  
"I'll be to your lab in less than ten minutes, Dr. Higurashi. You better have a miracle to show me."  
  
Suddenly, The Hanyou Project had moved up on Enders' list about five notches.  
*  
*  
*  
::Author's Note::  
  
Well, the original idea was to put the dinner issue in here too, but I realized that everyone would probably be jumping out of their skin when this hit the street. Had to send the general down there. Decided this would be a good place to end. I really hope the next chapter doesn't take as long to get up. ^^;; 


End file.
